Searching Email in global search or other suggestions?

[tinayang15]

We have Legal Service Delivery implemented. We have a separate legal counsel global search for them to use that searches legal requests and knowledge articles. They're looking to add email but as we know, sys_email table is a log and should not be used for global searches due to performance issues. Has anyone found a way to make it searchable or another way to do a one stop shop for searching legal requests, knowledge articles and emails in one place?

If not, we just have a workaround for them to search in 2 separate places. One in Legal Counsel global search - Legal request/articles and one in a list view of emails with an applied filter.

[John Martin2]

Further to my first reply -- what do you think about the following:

DTech Apps' ServiceNow certified applications, DocIntegrator and Tasker, can work together to provide a more streamlined and efficient solution for your Legal Service Delivery search challenge, especially with your plan to leverage SharePoint and Employee Center Pro. Here's how:  

DocIntegrator's Role: Connecting ServiceNow and SharePoint

• Secure Integration: DocIntegrator provides a secure and reliable connection between your ServiceNow instance and the SharePoint library where legal emails are stored. This is crucial for accessing and linking emails to legal requests.
• Contextual Linking: DocIntegrator enables you to establish links between ServiceNow Legal Request records and the corresponding emails stored in SharePoint. This allows legal counsel to easily navigate from a request to the related email.

Tasker's Role: Automating and Managing the Process

• Automated Email Archiving (Indirectly): While Tasker doesn't directly copy emails to SharePoint, you can use Tasker to manage or trigger the process that does. For example:
  • You could use Tasker to schedule or trigger a Flow Designer flow that calls DocIntegrator and other actions to copy emails to SharePoint based on certain criteria.  
  • Tasker could be used to create tasks for administrators to review and validate emails that need to be copied to SharePoint.
• Task Management and Tracking: Tasker can be used to manage tasks related to the email integration process:
  • Validation Tasks: You can create tasks for legal personnel to validate that emails have been correctly copied to SharePoint and linked to the appropriate Legal Request.
  • Error Handling Tasks: If there are issues with the email copying or linking process, Tasker can create tasks to alert administrators and track resolution.
• Workflow Automation: Tasker can automate workflows related to legal requests and email management:
  • Triggering Actions: Tasker can trigger actions based on events in ServiceNow (e.g., when a Legal Request is created or updated) to initiate email linking processes.
  • Notifications: Tasker can send notifications to legal counsel when emails related to their requests are available in SharePoint.

Combined Solution Using DocIntegrator and Tasker:

1. DocIntegrator Setup: Configure DocIntegrator to securely connect to the SharePoint library.
2. Email Copying Automation:
   • Implement a mechanism to automatically copy relevant legal emails to the SharePoint library. This might involve:
     • ServiceNow Flow Designer (triggered by Tasker or other events)
     • Custom scripts
     • Third-party email archiving solutions
3. Tasker Workflow for Email Linking:
   • Create a Tasker workflow that defines the process for linking emails to Legal Requests. This workflow could include:
     • Tasks for validating email copies.
     • Script actions to leverage DocIntegrator to create links between Legal Request records and SharePoint emails.
4. Legal Counsel Global Search:
   • Legal counsel uses their existing Legal Counsel global search in ServiceNow to find Legal Requests and knowledge articles.
5. Accessing Emails:
   • Legal Request records will have links (created by DocIntegrator and managed by Tasker) to the corresponding emails in SharePoint.
   • Legal counsel can easily click these links to view the full email content in SharePoint.
6. Employee Center Pro Search:
   • Employee Center Pro indexes the SharePoint library, allowing legal counsel to use Employee Center Pro's search to find emails based on content or metadata.

Benefits of this Combined Approach:

• Improved Efficiency: Automates and manages the process of linking emails to Legal Requests.
• Enhanced Tracking: Tasker provides visibility into the status of email linking and allows for task management.
• Workflow Automation: Tasker automates workflows related to legal requests and email management.
• Secure Integration: DocIntegrator ensures secure access to SharePoint.  
• Leverages Existing Search: Utilizes Employee Center Pro for email search.

In summary:

• DocIntegrator provides the secure connection and linking capabilities between ServiceNow and SharePoint.  
• Tasker provides the automation, workflow, and task management capabilities to orchestrate the email linking process and ensure its efficient execution.

By combining these two applications, you can create a more robust, automated, and manageable solution for your legal counsel's search needs.

[tinayang15 · Accepted solution]

We actually did a different approach instead of doing sharepoint for attachments! For emails, they like to drag and drop those into the attachments - they are auto converted to a PDF file with a label of COPY_PDF_FOR_SEARCH_attachmentName. They are now searchable in SN Legal counsel search.

We follow this document: Index attachments on a table

Create an index on the legal request table and then add a "text index table attribute map" for the table with the "attachment index" property set to true.